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Post by ouroboros on Mar 5, 2018 5:55:28 GMT -5
Yes, it makes sense that social conditioning would be the main factor in the development of that. Ego forms when the child fully grasps the idea and implications of 'me' vs 'you'. I don't really have a problem defining ego like that, just adding it to the list of criterion necessary for an experience of suffering, along with the ability of self-recognition in a mirror (which incidentally seems to vary from animal to animal within the same species - presumably meaning I can torture one to death and it suffers, and another, not).
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Post by someNOTHING! on Mar 5, 2018 10:00:48 GMT -5
If you haven't seen the documentary Grizzly Man, check it out. True story and narrated by director Werner Herzog (as usual, the perfect voice for the narration). Don't read about it first, just watch with an inquisitive mind. It does actually have some bearing on the convo at hand about suffering, peeps, animals, and, uummmm, some of the dangers about confusing their degrees of conscious behavior. Classic case of happy-face-stickering and someone trying to live a concept. Yeah, doesn't work out so well, although there's the same outcome for the body. Such a drama
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Mar 5, 2018 10:40:12 GMT -5
I contend that most of the lower animals (and infants) have no such story telling ability, and do not experience the suffering associated with it. In every animal, physical pain and fear serve to protect the creature, but when an animal without a story telling ability responds in that mode, it shouldn't be assumed that all the human stories that usually accompany that behavior are also present. Running is not suffering, fear is not suffering, crying out is not suffering, resistance is not suffering. The point of suffering is hidden from the adult because we don't know something unnatural has taken place in our minds. stpauls.vxcommunity.com/Issue/Us-Experiment-On-Infants-Withholding-Affection/13213The Harlow monkey experiments mentioned in the link above, saw these in a psychology class over 45 years ago. The point, it shows the baby monkeys suffer, without comfort and affection, even that from a doll.
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Mar 5, 2018 10:56:40 GMT -5
I don't get that you don't get that (past) suffering is the reason for future or now suffering. If there was not origin suffering there would be no reason for later suffering. I don't get that you don't get that I don't get that, though this is the first I've heard of it. Hehe. So, there has to be suffering before there can be suffering? Do I really need to point out the problem with that? Watch the video, it will explain everything. The baby monkey with no affection, obviously suffers. Lack of affection, even that of a rag doll, forms a distorted monkey "ego", which suffers.
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Post by andrew on Mar 5, 2018 11:10:27 GMT -5
I work with a rescue dog who seven years on still cowers and flinches on first touch. The notion that animals or infants aren't traumatized because they can't tell stories is plain silly. I have a friend who was raped as an infant. Her life has been pure hell even though she remembers nothing. It's a tidy world you live in. Doesn't resemble the one I live in, but true it might be just perspective, a little bit of that Catholic upbringing still sticks with me. "There but for the grace of God go I." Obviously, animals learn from experience to be wary of certain situations. If they didn't, they wouldn't survive long. You call it being traumatized and conclude suffering, but you don't know that. Part of my interest here is to get peeps to stop knowing things they don't really know.
As for the infant, she can't remember being raped because there was no 'me' structure around which to form a traumatic event. Same reason you can't remember anything as an infant either. I don't know why her life is hell, but I'm not going to assume it's because of an event she doesn't remember. Well the thing is that there are some things that are known that you have to go out of your way intellectually NOT to know them. I'm not saying that that makes these things unquestionable, but equally, the nature of life is such that we can question the as.s out of some things, and we are still going to know them. In this case, if you hear a baby screaming, you can't NOT know that it is suffering. (There are certain other things that you also can't not know....ahem....)
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Post by andrew on Mar 5, 2018 11:11:50 GMT -5
Sometimes I find two options to be very very equal, and it can be over something very innocuous. For example, I can pull out of the drive way and there be two equal options as to which grocer store to go to. What I do in that situation is get completely and totally out of the way and 'let the car decide'. If the car goes left, then it means I am going to Safeway. if it goes right, it means I am going to Co-Op (though occasionally this too can change before I get there). From my perspective that just means you don't have any clear preferences in that regard. And so either option will do and whatever option you eventually choose can be undone as easily. Yes, that's how it is.
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Post by enigma on Mar 5, 2018 11:12:44 GMT -5
Wait...what?! They halted the experiment after half the infants died? Did they figure they had enough data at that point? But what does that experiment indicate regarding your (non-)suffering theory about babies? The article didn't mention anything about screaming in agony and finally hanging themselves in their cribs. It said they died. The alleged study was about the significance of 'love and nurturing' which I see as the need to engage with the world that the child just entered. Everybody needs a reason to live. We commonly see old folks peacefully dying when that reason is no longer there.
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Post by andrew on Mar 5, 2018 11:18:19 GMT -5
yeah it unfolded as I had felt. If I decide to argue a subject and the other person doesn't show up, it can go different ways. In this case, it's not a strong and congruent desire, so 'no show' is fine. That's really what the capacity to argue boils down to isn't it, it's the amount of satisfaction one finds in arguing a particular point. And I guess one has to find satisfaction in arguing itself. Right, no strong preferences. What you are describing, conceptualizing it and even verbalizing it is what ZD would call mind chatter. And that's not even necessary. The arriving at decisions can happen in a much more intuitive way. But I agree, thinking can be fun as well, playing around with ideas. It's part of the creative process. And as such it is fine. But if it becomes a way of life, when you start thinking your way thru life instead of feeling (or 'intuiting') your way thru life than it can become a burden and a source of suffering. And you seem to do a bit of both (as we probably all do) but with slightly more stress on the thinking part. well I would describe 'thinking' our way through life as taking a rational approach to decision making. That definitely doesn't apply to me lol. What I am discerning in regard to any choice, is the highest feeling, but sometimes that isn't clear, and that's fine. In the end it always does become clear, but often not until the moment of the decision (for example, in the case of the land lady, I only decided we were staying as I went to write out the cheque).
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Post by andrew on Mar 5, 2018 11:19:42 GMT -5
Well if you look at what I said again, you will see that I said 'that's not to say that emotion has no accompanying thought or cognitive movement'. So I'm definitely not separating emotion from the thinking mind. What I am saying is that what is felt is often known BEFORE the thought. You can look at something and for no apparent or obvious reason in that moment, it trigger a deep or strong emotion. If we look closely we can find a cognitive movement that went with it, but that's not the point. I'm not sure the 'mind' is only in the head, I think 'mind' might well be in every cell of the body, but there is an intensification in the head area, such that it seems like it is in the head. So sometimes, your 'gut' will react before you head. Or your heart will react before your head. But for the purposes of investigation, it is useful to look at the accompanying cognitive movements, which BK does. I'm talking about this: "when it has something to 'say', it is is far more potent than the thinking or cognitive mind" That's separating it from the cognitive mind and personalizing it. As you say here, there's an underlying thought that triggers it. It doesn't have something to say beyond that thought that precedes it, and it's not more potent than the thought that follows it. My point is that you can't think your way out of a feeling when it happens. In this sense, the feeling has something to say, and doesn't give a monkeys what the thinking mind has to say.
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Post by andrew on Mar 5, 2018 11:24:38 GMT -5
Sometimes I find two options to be very very equal, and it can be over something very innocuous. For example, I can pull out of the drive way and there be two equal options as to which grocer store to go to. What I do in that situation is get completely and totally out of the way and 'let the car decide'. If the car goes left, then it means I am going to Safeway. if it goes right, it means I am going to Co-Op (though occasionally this too can change before I get there). Fine, but remaining immobile at the end of the driveway for an extended period of time waiting for one option to outweigh the other is not a rational option, so by some means a decision is made. Everyone knows this from their own experience so I don't understand how anyone sees a paradox. ah, as i just said, my approach isn't very rational compared to most folks. There are times when I have sat and waited. There have been times when I have felt the movement to go for a walk, and will walk one way down the street, and then back the way I came, and then back the way I came etc....to most folks this is an 'irrational' way to go for a walk, but sometimes that's just the way the movement wants to play itself out. What the world considers to be 'sane', I don't have much care for. There are times though when sitting and waiting isn't appropriate I agree. I didn't use the word paradox, maybe someone else did.
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Post by andrew on Mar 5, 2018 11:26:11 GMT -5
Then you value what you call 'the truth'. You value 'speaking the truth'. The values will also determine how attached one is to a given value. If I say to you that you have a strong attachment to what you call 'the truth', I don't mean that in a negative way, it's just that you value it highly. So what you call values is when you value something? Doing something?... Okay, I smell rabbit, so lets let that one go. Yeah, values are just 'what you value' lol...nothing complicated about it. You value what you call 'truth' and this is reflected in your choices.
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Post by andrew on Mar 5, 2018 11:28:44 GMT -5
Okay, I can agree, but it's because of the nature of the context here. What we do here is share ideas, and within that context, some ideas are going to be right/wrong, true/false, valid/invalid etc. We can point beyond ideas, and that's cool n' all, but even this happens from within the context of ideas. I tend to approach forum conversation quite rationally (and intellectually, yes. When I say I haven't got things figured out, I am saying I have never landed on a final answer to any deep question that I can then carry around with me in which way that makes me think or believe or feel that ''I have got life/existence/God figured out''. Any answer I have ever landed on, has been for that moment, and it can potentially change in the next moment. So would you say you approach discussion here in an open-ended, flexible sort of way? sometimes yes, sometimes no. It all depends. Sometimes I am here just for a chat, just to connect and understand what folks think about things. Other times I have more of a clear agenda. At the moment I'm somewhere leaning towards 'chat' but also not totally without agenda.
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Post by andrew on Mar 5, 2018 11:30:08 GMT -5
I can't get on board with Seth's use of language there, but I am on board with the 'sentiment' of it. What's the sentiment of it? I can only really express another sentiment, but I would say the electron has a hum of aliveness (or pick a similar word).
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Post by andrew on Mar 5, 2018 11:35:05 GMT -5
Ants! Didn't see that coming. Me neither. That blew my self aware mind. We currently have an ant problem here and we've been murdering self aware ants by the hundreds. It got me to pondering the deeper implications of the hive mind. Is a collective mind somehow self aware? I think there is such a thing as 'group entity' or 'group energy' that does have a level of self-awareness to it.
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Post by andrew on Mar 5, 2018 11:36:35 GMT -5
The Harlow monkey experiments mentioned in the link above, saw these in a psychology class over 45 years ago. The point, it shows the baby monkeys suffer, without comfort and affection, even that from a doll. I can't watch it because I know I will suffer if I do. I'm okay with suffering if I think it will serve value, but in this case, I don't think it will. The experiment is a GREAT example of your point though.
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